Shutterless miniature thermal imaging camera
May 1st 2007

Thermoteknix has launched an Alpha Silicon based Focal Plane Array thermal imaging camera with shutterless XTi technology. The Miricle 110KS with XTi is an ultracompact uncooled (unstabilised) solid-state high resolution infrared camera delivering 'Never Blind' thermal imaging. The camera is designed without a shutter or any moving parts to interrupt vision at critical moments and is unaffected by shock or vibration.

The removal of the shutter and associated motor, gears and control mean that Miricle cameras with XTi technology are smaller, lighter and lower power consuming, a benefit to all portable and size critical applications.

Until now, the current generation of focal plane array (FPA) based cameras have required frequent shuttered calibration (NUC or Wink) blanking off the incoming image with a 'shutter' or 'flag' and rendering the observer 'blind' to the scene for several seconds at a time. In critical situations such as target tracking, on-line machine vision or weapon based applications, this complete obstruction to vision can be at least inconvenient and at worst, fatal. Each element in the FPA detector possesses a different gain and offset value which require continuous adjustment to present a uniform image.

Many factors including external ambient temperature, drift and the temperature of the detector itself lead to a fundamental fixed pattern noise in the detector output.

This leads to steady deterioration of image quality over time. Traditional cameras address this issue by regularly interposing a uniform surface in front of the detector – typically a mechanically driven shutter or flag which blocks all radiation from the scene and performs a Non-Uniformity Correction (NUC). This 'shuttered' or 'blinkered' approach although being quite effective, has several obvious and major problems associated with it: Vision is interrupted while the detector is calibrated which can take several seconds.

Inevitable additional size, weight, unreliability and fatigue of a mechanical, moving shutter The acoustic noise generated by the shutter opening and closing The additional power required to operate the shutter Added design complexity of extra moving parts and susceptibility to wear, or jamming.

Thermoteknix's Miricle 110KS with XTi technology is based on a 384 x 288 7-14 micron Alpha Silicon microbolometer, this ultraminiature and lightweight, ruggedised thermal imaging device is Instant-On and provides continuous, uncooled, solid state, perfect digital thermal imaging – all of the time.

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